DISTRIBUTION OF AGRICULTURAL INCOME 297 



tend to get the same wages, even in different neighborhoods, for 

 the simple reason that if the demand for labor is greater in one 

 neighborhood than in another, laborers will migrate from the 

 one where the demand is less to the other where the demand 

 is greater. Unless there are artificial restrictions in the way of 

 their getting employment in the one neighborhood, or unless 

 the two neighborhoods are so wide apart as to involve an ex- 

 pensive journey, wages for the same kind of labor will be the 

 same in different localities, and labor will not command a mere 

 site value. But two acres of land may be only a few miles apart 

 and their real fertility may be equal, but one may be, by reason 

 solely of its location, worth many times as much as the other. 

 Site value is, as a matter of fact, an element of greater or less 

 importance in the total value of almost every acre of land. In 

 cities it is almost the only element. 



However, when the farmer is considering the question of rent- 

 ing or buying a parcel of land, his question is what it will enable 

 him to produce over and above what it will cost him to culti- 

 vate it. Then there is the question of how much land he shall use. 

 Will it pay him better to cultivate a large tract or a small tract ? 

 This brings in the question of the marginal productivity of 

 land. In order to cultivate a larger rather than a smaller tract, 

 he must either employ more labor and capital or use the same 

 labor and capital as he would use on the smaller tract, but spread 

 it more thinly, that is, cultivate the large tract less intensively. 

 Assuming, even, that he has or can get the use of indefinite 

 quantities of capital, and that he can hire indefinite numbers of 

 laborers and buy or rent indefinite areas of land, there would 

 still be a limit to the quantity of land which he could handle 

 economically, owing to the increasing difficulties of oversight 

 and supervision. The productivity of the land would decline 

 under his management acre by acre as he approached the limit of 

 his capacity as a manager, not, of course, through any physical 



